OVERVIEW OF THE FIGHT
Zon’ozz is a relatively simple encounter made up of two alternating phases.

The Ping Pong Phase, during which the raid must bounce a purple Ball (a damage-immune enemy NPC) between themselves, by blocking its traveling path, before finally hitting the boss with it. During this phase, the raid must also: endure a stacking self-buff that the boss uses to enrage himself progressively and dispel a harmful magic debuff.

The Black Phase, which lasts 30 seconds, is triggered whenever Zon’ozz is touched by the Ball. During this phase, two important things happen: the more bounces the Ball made in the previous phase, the more damage the boss takes during the Black Phase. The raid must stack together to deal with very heavy AoE damage. This alternation of phases continues until Warlord Zon’ozz is dead.

PING PONG PHASE

The Ping Pong Phase is the main phase of the fight. The phase ends when the Ball touches the boss. Your raid will choose for this to happen after a certain amount of time, as this resets Zon’ozz stacking enrage and make him take increased damage during the Black Phase.

Abilities

During the Ping Pong Phase, Zon’ozz has the following abilities:

Focused Anger: is a stacking buff that Zon’ozz applies to himself, roughly once every 6 seconds. It increases his attack speed and damage dealt by 10% per stack.

Psychic Drain: a frontal cone attack that deals a high amount of Shadow damage (90,000 in LFR and 120,000 in 10 and 25-man difficulty) to every enemy in front Zon’ozz and heals the boss for 10 times the amount of damage dealt. Zon’ozz casts this ability every 20 seconds.

Void of the Unmaking (the Ball) is an NPC that Zon’ozz summons at the start of the fight, and after each Black Phase. The boss will summon the Ball directly in front of him. It is immune to damage, and slowly moves around the room. If the Ball comes in contact with a player, it bounces back in the opposite direction. When this happens, the Ball also deals a large amount of damage through Void Diffusion. The damage is split between all players within a small area. Additionally, each time the Ball touches a player, it stacks two buffs on itself:
– Void Diffusion, a buff that increases the damage that it deals when it comes in contact with a player, by 20% for each stack;
– A buff that increases the damage that Zon’ozz takes during the Black Phase, after coming in contact with the Ball, by 5% for each stack.
If the Ball comes in contact with Zon’ozz, it forces him to enter the Black Phase, resetting his stacks of Focused Anger and causing him to take 5% increased damage for each stack of the aforementioned buff that the Ball had at the time. If the Ball comes in contact with one of the walls of the room, the entire raid is damaged by Black Blood Eruption.

Disrupting Shadows is a DoT that Zon’ozz casts on a number of random players (3 in 10-man, between 7 and 10 in 25-man difficulty). This DoT deals Shadow damage every 2 seconds for 20 seconds. Zon’ozz casts this ability every 20 seconds. It can be dispelled, and when dispelled, the target takes a moderate amount of Shadow damage and is knocked back. In LFR, dispelling the DoT has no negative effects.

Strategy

The strategy for the Ping Pong Phase revolves around bouncing the Ball between raid members and then finally hitting Zon’ozz with it, in order to trigger the Black Phase (the more bounces before Zon’ozz is hit by the Ball, the more damage he will take during the Black Phase). Disrupting Shadows must also be dispelled. Finally, players should simply deal as much damage as possible to Warlord Zon’ozz.

Ping Ponging the Ball:

The most important part of the Ping Pong Phase is, properly controlling the movement of the Ball. The Ball must be soaked by a group of players (as otherwise, the damage that it deals when it reaches a player would kill that player); the more times the Ball is bounced around between players, the more damage Zon’ozz will take in the Black Phase (5% damage taken increase per bounce); The more times the Ball is bounced around between players, the more damage each bounce will do (20% damage done increase per bounce).

With that in mind, the first thing to do is to deal with Zon’ozz summoning the Ball, something that happens a few seconds after the fight begins. The idea is to have the Ranged group stack about 20 yards from the boss and the Melee group (tank included) run to the boss. The exact positioning of the Melee group does not really matter at this stage, only that the tank must make the boss face slightly away from the Ranged group.

The boss usually summons the Ball before the first Psychic Drain Icon Psychic Drain, but we have seen occurrences where the first Psychic Drain came before the Ball. So the raid needs to prepare for this possibility. This is the reason for making the boss face slightly away from the Ranged Group.

When the ball is summoned, the Ranged group will have to move slightly, to intercept the Ball, while the tank should proceed to face the boss entirely away from them (due to Psychic Drain Icon Psychic Drain). The ping pong part begins as soon as the Ball collides with the Ranged group.

Normal Positions Next, the bouncing will begin between the Ranged group and the Melee group. When it is time for the Black Phase to start, simply have all the players from the Melee group move out of the path of the Ball so that it can hit the boss.

In LFR difficulty, it might be hard to get everyone from the melee group to move out from the Ball’s path at the same time (so that it hits Zon’ozz). Fortunately, in LFR difficulty, the damage from the Ball touching a player is split over a very large area. This enables the tank to bounce the Ball alone (the damage will spread to the melee group, even if they are standing on the other side of the boss). When the time for the Black Phase comes, it is much easier to have only one player move away from the Ball’s path (rather than a group of players).

Timing for Triggering the Black Phase;

The timing for when to trigger the Black Phase is not set in stone. Your overall goal is to force the boss into the Black Phase as often as possible, after having performed as many bounces of the Ball as possible. This will put the boss in the state where he takes increased damage for longer, and the damage increase itself will be greater. Keep in mind, though, that each time the Ball bounces, the damage of its following bounce is increased by 20% (and that this effect stacks).

As such, you should try to have a rather small path for the Ball to travel during each bounce, increasing the number of bounces you can perform in a short span of time (though it looks as if you need to wait a few seconds before being able to bounce the Ball again). Then, you should trigger the Black Phase. We advise triggering the Black Phase, at most, every 60 seconds and when after making the Ball bounce between 5 and 10 times.

Disrupting Shadows: Players affected by Disrupting Shadows should always be dispelled. In 10 and 25-man difficulty, dispelling should be done carefully: Players should only be dispelled when they have enough health to survive the roughly 60,000 damage they will take (and any subsequent damage they may take from the Ball); When dispelling, it is important that the player does not get knocked into the Ball (thus dying to unsoaked damage) or away from the group when the Ball is about to hit it (thus not soaking the damage, causing the rest of the group to take more damage). For these reasons, it is best to have one healer assigned to dispelling in 10-man, and one or two healers in 25-man, thus avoiding confusion. If the raid is topped off when Disrupting Shadows is cast, Priests can use Mass Dispel.

BLACK PHASE

After spending a period of time in the Ping Pong Phase, your raid will wish to trigger the Black Phase, by having the boss come in contact with the Ball (Void of the Unmaking). This will reset the boss’ stacks of Focused Anger Icon Focused Anger and cause him to take increased damage. This phase lasts for exactly 30 seconds, during which time your raid must only heal a large amount of raid-wide damage and DPS the boss. After 30 seconds, the Ping Pong Phase restarts.

Abilities

During the Black Phase, your raid will take unavoidable, raid-wide damage from two abilities:

Black Blood of Go’rath: this is a debuff that Zon’ozz places on every raid member. It lasts for 30 seconds and deals Shadow damage every second.

Zon’ozz spawns several Eyes of Go’rath. These NPCs cannot be tanked or attacked, and they deal damage to random raid members (Shadow Gaze).

Strategy

The strategy for the Black Phase is extremely simple. Just have your entire raid stack up on Warlord Zon’ozz and heal the damage. After exiting the Black Phase, Warlord Zon’ozz will first summon another Ball, and 5 seconds later he will start casting Psychic Drain Icon Psychic Drain. As soon as the Ball has been summoned, the tank should face the boss away from the raid.

Leave a Reply

Sherlock to the rescue!

The Puzzlebox

Welcome to my crib!

Ello, I'm Sumanhi. I play a Nelf resto druid on Dragonblight EU and a small arsenal of healer alts. I've been a resto since early Vanilla so it's pretty fair to assume I've healed a lot. A whole lot. And then some more. Topics on this blog can cover pretty much anything related to WoW and pie.